A table about groups I (Ed Pegg) put together ... I want to show pictures of all these groups.

SOCCALOT, by David Wilson--------------------------------------------------------------------The game is a two-player game based loosely on soccer. It is played onan 8x8 checker or chessboard. The teams, Red and Black, each have 6men (checkers). An additional piece (white pawn) represents the ball.The initial setup is as follows (R = Red, B = Black, O = ball).

Play proceeds in turns, Red plays first. A play is one of thefollowing:

------------------------------------------------------------ RUN: Move one of your men one space, as a King in chess. A man may not move to an occupied square (by his own man, an opponent's man, or the ball).

------------------------------------------------------------ DRIBBLE: If your man is King-adjacent to the ball, you may move that man and the ball each one space, maintaining their relative position. Neither the man nor the ball may move to an occupied square.

------------------------------------------------------------ KICK: If your man is King-adjacent to the ball, you may move the ball any number of unoccupied spaces in the direction directly away from the man. The ball may move to or across an occupied square. The man does not move.

For example, in the following position, Red may kick the Ball to any of the positions marked x.

The game is won by getting the ball to the back rank (opponent'sfirst rank).--------------------------------------------------------------------Much of the game is a struggle to gain control of the ball or tofind an opening to the back rank. The course of the game can changesuddenly when the ball is kicked to a remote area of the board.You should play five or six games before passing judgment, at whichpoint you will either be totally turned off or hopelessly addicted.

If you like board games, you might want to try this one. I devisedthis game back in 1972, and played a few games with a cousin, whowhipped me soundly. I forgot about the game until 1999. At that time,the lunchtime chess club was playing around with chess variants, and Iremembered this game (which is not a chess variant). The game caughton very well, and we played it to the exclusion of chess for severalweeks. Finally, we determined that the game needed a name, andeventually settled on Soccolot.----------------------------------------------------------------------

Winning Strategy for Square Removal Game, by Mark Thompson

In the square removal game, a 16x16 square starts the game, and players take turns removing 1x1, 2x2, or 3x3 squares from it. The last to move loses.

I believe the first player wins the square-removal game. The winning strategy is to begin by playing a 2x2 in the center of the board, and then play symmetrically to the second player’s moves by a 180 degree rotation through the center, until a certain clearly-definable crucial point is reached. Note that if the first player adopts this strategy, there will never come a time when the second player can spoil or use up the last place where a 2x2 square could be removed; if one such place exists at the beginning of the second player's turn, there will also be another symmetrically opposite. Therefore when the time comes when there is exactly one place remaining where a 2x2 square can be removed, it will be player 1’s turn. At this point, player 1 can abandon symmetric play; he counts the number of 2x2 squares that have been removed thus far, and if the total is odd, he places the last 2x2 square; if the total is even, player 1 uses some other size of square to spoil the position so that no more 2x2 squares can be played. I think it's clear that this will always be possible.

After that, player 1 can do anything he likes, because no matter how the game proceeds, in the end it will have used an even number of 2x2 squares. Note that the total number of 1x1 plus 3x3 squares used in a game will always be even (since the entire board has an even number of squares); therefore, if there are an even number of 2x2 squares used, the game will last an even number of turns, which means player 2 loses. So as long as player 1 can ensure that an even number of 2x2 squares are used, he wins; and the strategy described ensures this.---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bryce Herdt -- an 8x8 square is filled with the numbers 1-64. Can all sums of orthogonal squares be squarenumbers? What is the fewest possible number of differing orthogonal sums?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Ms.Mami Ishizaki in Japan has found the 20 moves result on 6 by 6.

What is the greatest number of moves for a 2-piece sliding block puzzle on a 7x7 square? What is the greatest number of moves for a 3 piece puzzle ina 6x6 square? The Sliding Block Puzzle analyzer is *very* nice to play with! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All of the solutions below are courtesy of the wonderful Polyforms Group.